Hyperpolitics by Anton Jager

Jager’s essay revolves around the term Hyperpolitics - a concept intended to ‘make sense of what comes after the mass politics of the short twentieth century (1914-1989), the post-politics of the “very long” 1990s (1989-2008), and the anti-politics of the 2010s.’ Jager argues that the 90s and 00s could largely be defined by people not only disengaging themselves from politics, but also any sense of a collective social contract, societies becoming increasingly withdrawn and private. By contrast, the age of Hyperpolitics saw society explode back into the world of politics and social interaction, largely through the internet and social media platforms.

People engage far more with politics and current affairs, frequently in an all-consuming way. Just thinking about the trump trucks and associated caps, flags, t-shirts, coffee mugs and firearms (!), there is a sense that people are making their beliefs or affiliations their entire personality. But just as there are a nauseating amount of social media posts from red-hatted, mouth breathing anti-gubment plebs consistently voting against their own interests; so there are equally no end of twitter threads and reddit posts from children who have disowned their bigoted, MAGA-brained parents.

Jager’s central idea in Hyperpolitics is that the public are constantly inundated with a barrage of events, crises, turmoil and all associated reactions and responses to said event, but nothing seems to stick around for long. We move on to the next crisis, the next oppressive action or government overreach that mobilises us as far as our keyboards and touchscreens. While the champions of the Civil Rights or Anti-Apartheid Movements were usually lifelong devotees with a history of church affiliations, union memberships, a track record of social conscience, Jager sees modern politics as disposable, temporary, akin perhaps to the NFTs that were worth thousands one day, worthless the next.

Sociologically, it is rooted in a society in which exit options abound and citizens find it easy to move from one institution to another. Just as employment has become more precarious in the post-industrial era, abandoning a family, a relationship, a party, or a circle of friends is a much less demanding process than it was…The life-worlds of the online are the primary environment for this sort of deinstitutionalized, impermanent engagement, offering repertoires of social expression that require little to no long-term obligation… people are lonelier in the new century, but also more agitated; more atomized, but also more connected; angrier, yet more disoriented.

We have reached this new milestone of individualism where people can unapologetically speak without checking in with their frontal lobe at all. People can say whatever they like, believe whatever they want to and simply carve out small spaces in the internet where other atomised people holding the same problematic, poisonous opinions, beliefs or personality traits can form their own society of ‘truth-tellers’ with people free to come and go as their opinions wax and wane. At the other end righteously minded critics can name, shame and dox the extremists and conspiracists, threatening their employment and family lives. But even cancellation culture, that for a while seemed to represent our 21st century version of street justice, is temporary. Racist talk show hosts move over to Rumble, celebrities lean into the grift, nazi police officers get a job at the next station along. Everything is empty slop now. We did it Reddit!

Jager sums up the concept of Hyperpolitics by comparison to what came before: If anti-politics was initiated by social groups hit hard by the crisis of 2008, now the whole of society is politicized. By the same token, while populism attached itself to a recognizable ideological vector, hyperpolitics is a permanently volatile, diffuse phenomenon. Quite a lot of what Jager frames resonates with what I’ve seen in societal shift, but I think there are some core components missing from his theory. Most importantly the significant influence of social media algorithms themselves. I think its very hard to talk about modern politics without trying to factor in the highly sophisticated social engineering and influence that the social media space, as well as algorithm-driven platforms like YouTube, contribute. Further, its still not clear to what extent all of these algorithms are tweaked to generate as much outrage and engagement as possible from the asset assimilating techno-feudalists that just want to keep us constantly on edge.

Hyperpolitics feels like the early stages of crystalising various strands of contemporary political and social theory into something more complete. I think there’s still some finessing to do, not least to better understand whether this political atmosphere is entirely negative, or just waiting for the right approach to harness its chaotic power for social good. The ideas are clearly stated with decent enough examples and comparisons throughout. Given the relatively short runtime (just under 100 pages) Jager mentions the French author Michel Houllebecq a lot. I get it, the nihilism of modern society makes us all individualistic, but did he really need to go through 6 of his books to make the point? That being said it was a welcome contrast to Post-Weird (reviewed in October) that just felt like a series of bloviating farts.

Thanks to Netgalley and Verso for the chance to review an advanced copy. Hyperpolitics will be published on February 10 and is available to pre-order via the Verso webstore.